By Jude Schneider (5-28-09)

Today is forty-nine days, which is seven weeks of the Omer.

 

It is a tradition to count the days between Passover and Shavuot, as we mark our freedom from slavery and celebrate our freedom to accept Torah. This is called "counting the omer." This year we will observe the tradition of "counting the omer" by sharing stories about the many different ways that we have been turned on to Jewish learning, and through Jewish learning to Torah.

Thank you to everyone who wrote about a memorable moment of Jewish learning. We've collected 49 amazing stories, and we're grateful to all of our contributors. 

The Old Tallit 

My father believed in the orthodoxy of the Reform movement.  Sacred objects such as tallitot and kippot were out; English was in, and when we told him about Emanuel's tashlich on the beach, he shook his head in dismay.  He was, in his own way, a religious Jew; but to him, the ceremonies and the trappings of Judaism were illogical and superstitious.

In 1999, we took a family trip to Vienna with my parents.  My father took us to Stadttempel (City Temple).  As we stood there, my father started to cry.  Perhaps I had known and forgotten, or perhaps I had never known this, but we learned that my father had been scheduled for his Bar Mitzvah there on the Shabbat after his 13th birthday; which would have been November 11, 1938.  Kristallnacht took place on November 9th and 10th.  His father was rounded up and sent away (just temporarily) and the synagogue was vandalized.  There was to be no Bar Mitzvah.  My father had not been in Stadttempel since that day.  

Our son, Jake, was also born in early November; and as it came time to schedule his Bar Mitzvah, Jake wondered: would his Papa Fred like to become Bar Mitzvah with him, sharing the same parshah that he had prepared in 1938?  My father tenuously agreed to explore the option.  Jake sat down with Cantor Kliger, who gently tried to talk him out of a joint Bar Mitzvah service (in the proper Jewish spirit-making a "no" easier than a "yes"), asking him if he really wanted to share the spotlight on his big day.  Jake stood fast.   

Over the next few months, Jake and his grandfather (in New Jersey) had regular phone sessions to go over the parshah and the prayers.  Jake was the coach, my father the nervous pupil. 

I found an old tallit that my father said had belonged to his grandfather in Austria. It was moth-eaten and ragged.  My father thought it beyond repair and that resuscitating it was ridiculous.  But I took it to Emanuel's fabric guru, Kara Klein, and we examined it closely.  It turned out it wasn't a whole tallit-it looked like it was half of a tallit, cut vertically. 

I decided to harvest two pieces from the old tallit and to sew them into new tallitot, one for Jake and one for my father. I preserved a third piece of the old tallit for Jake's younger brother, Eli.  Working with Kara, I learned about the elements of a tallit; the atarah, the tzitzit, the reinforced corners, and the restrictions on mixing wool and linen. 

Knowing I was juggling the Bar Mitzvah planning, my full-time job, and the rest of our family obligations, my father told me I was wasting time on a sewing project involving his moth-eaten old tallit. Nonetheless, I completed the two tallitot. At his request, I had his atarah embroidered with the words "l'shanah haba'ah b'yerushalayim"--Next year in Jerusalem.   

The Bar Mitzvah was moving beyond words.  My father had been reluctant to chant the maftir, wanting Jake to have that moment himself. When the time came though, they held the yad together and spoke in unison.  At the close of the service, my father presented Jake with his grandfather's tefillin.  The tefillin had been in the same bag as the moth-eaten old tallit: abandoned, forgotten and until that day, unvalued.

Shortly before he died, my father thanked me for the tallit.  He told me that he understood and appreciated the importance of the old tallit and the new tallitot that united him and Jake on their Bar Mitzvah day.   

We now have that tallit back, and I imagine that along with the tefillin, it will be handed down one day, from father to son or father to daughter; a sacred object uniting my father, his grandfather, me, Jake, and our future generations.  L'dor va'dor.   

 

By Jude Schneider

These stories are brought to you by the Temple Emanuel RE-IMAGINE project, an 18-month initiative sponsored by Hebrew Union College, devoted to re-thinking and re-structuring our religious school.